Despite an unhealthy interest in squeaky synthesizers

and stage musicals, novelist GORDON LEGGE holds that

Prince is a

"musician without peer". Despite the fact that his father nearly

called him 'Skipper'.

TO save browsing time, on Monday mornings I go through one of the piles of vinyl that carpet my flat, picking out about 40/ 50 LPs. I play CDs when I'm working, new release singles when I'm getting ready to go out, and vinyl when I'm cooking and eating. To complement mealtimes, among the dust-furred annual plays, the all-time classics and the comfy compilations, there'll always be room for a side or two by the wee fellow - you know the boy I'm on about, from Minneapolis, used to call himself Prince.

He was actually christened Prince, Prince Rogers Nelson. His father chose the name. His mother wanted to call him Skipper. (You can't help but wonder, Angus-Deayton style, if the equally canine Rover was ever put forward as a compromise.) Anyway, my dad's middle name's Rodgers. There you go. Bonded.

At the start of the 80s, I was at uni. Thoroughly miserable, after classes, I'd go walkabout, round Edinburgh's record shops. Ezy Rider in Forrest Road was always good for cheap singles. One day I shelled out 25p for 'Gotta Stop (Messin' About)' b/w 'I Wanna Be Your Lover'. The a-side was good, really frantic, but the b-side (a big American hit) was simply irresistible, like Sylvester singing with Chic. Admittedly, not the sort of stuff I normally listened to - me being the classic early 80s bedroom victim - I was, however, smitten. As a consequence, I invested in loads of P-Funk, Slave and Ohio Players. Sly and the Family Stone's Greatest Hits became my favourite LP.

I got Controversy, Prince's 1981 release. The track 'Do Me Baby' had an equally profound effect. There was no denying it, 'Do Me Baby' was, in the words of my pal Wee Lou - finger heading down throat - ''Ugh! Sexy music!'' But I loved it. I started buying records by the Stylistics, the Detroit Spinners, Al Green, Bill Withers, Curtis Mayfield and the Chi-Lites. Along with the funk, the sort of stuff you'd imagine pulsing out the bedroom of Mr and Mrs Nelson's little laddie.

But, and here's a theory, I think he was into other stuff. I hear the mighty Steely Dan in Prince. To prove a point, I recently compiled a C-90 for a friend - not a Prince fan, but a massive Dan fan. There's the same soaring swagger, the confidence in genre-hopping, the attention to detail, the sheer and utter love of music. I also detect a regal fondness for the works of - eh, what is it you say again; oh, aye - enigmatic whizzkid, virtuoso guitarist and 70s studio master Todd Rundgren. (By rock'n'roll law, you're still not allowed to write ''Todd Rundgren'' without first preceding it with some lengthy, wacky description.)

Now, if you add all that up - the funk, the ballads, the Dan's musicology, Rundgren's playful ambition - you arrive at Prince.

Especially the much neglected, and much troubled, Prince of the 90s. Following on from the success of Purple Rain etc, sales figures for some of the more recent albums have prompted nothing so much as gossip column ridicule, while critical response has been, at best, patronising. Go to any second hand shop and check out the P section. It's massive, disproportionately so. They're all there, multiple copies. Bizarrely mirroring my own collection, all the vinyl up to Graffiti Bridge (Prince's weakest offering, though, perversely, home to one of his greatest pieces, 'The Question of U'); all the CDs from Diamonds and Pearls through to the rousing Emancipation.

Many thoughts have struck while writing this piece. Here's two of them:

i) I haven't a scoobie what a Chi-Lite is.

ii) We don't have credible black American pop stars anymore. Sure, we get the odd decent album (D'Angelo's Brown Sugar), the odd classic single (Byron Stingly's 'Get Up', Ray Davis Jr's 'Gabriel'), but that's about it. We've got rap, and I think history'll be kind to rap (well, look, if it's either that or Radiohead...). But, trouble is, you can't help but feel that with Prince we've reached the end of something. Little Richard. James Brown. Stevie Wonder. Prince...

All the more reason then to treasure him.

Recently, the four CD set Crystal Ball came out. Three-parts old and unreleased to one-part new and unplugged, it barely scratched the indie chart; yet, aside for making way for Air, Superstar's 'Palm Tree', The Strap, Mogwai's remixes, that Run DMC single and Ray of Light's title track, it's hardly been off my machine. Alongside great pop, lashings of serious funk and - sorry, Wee Lou - a couple of big, sexy ballads, Crystal Ball introduces us to a 15 minute impromptu piece (the simply magnificent 'Cloreen Bacon Skin'), the genuinely amusing 'Movie Star', and, in 'PoomPoom, Make Your Mama Happy' and 'Comeback', three corkers which stake pretty strong claims to making my all-time Prince top 20.

(Important things, all-time top 20s. When I was wee I used to spend hours - okay, days; okay, my life; okay, I wasn't that wee either - working out who'd made the best "20th best" track of all-time, figuring the answer would provide the all-time greatest pop star. Prince's 20th best 'Love 2 the 9's' holds its own against anybody's. When it comes to best "100th best" he's only got a struggling The Fall and a complicated Lee Perry for competition.)

Of course, there's flaws: specifically an unhealthy interest in squeaky synthesisers and the dynamics of stage musicals - Crystal Ball's 'Strays of the World' being a particularly hideous example. Sorry, but Andrew Lloyd Webber is nothing to aspire to. (Funnily enough, assuming accents and vocal affectations to indicate writing in character, this may go some way to partially excusing another of his foibles: such far from sexy lyrics as ''I hate to see an erection go to waste''. Ugh!) (But another thought: Prince is about the only person I can think of who has constantly employed women as band members, collaborators, technicians, etc.)

On June 7, the great man turned 40. To date, he's released 20 albums. Not one of which I wouldn't recommend. As singer, songwriter, musician and arranger he remains without peer.

Here's hoping you party on, wee man - well past 1999.

Happy birthday.

And thank you.

GORDON LEGGE's latest collection of short stories, Near Neighbours, is out now on Jonathan Cape.